Re: idea -> internal frames?

[Stefan Monnier]

> > I'm not sure whether it justifies `internal frames'.
> > But I agree that window manipulation could/should be improved.  Another
> > example was for the EDE (if I remember correctly) where they wanted
> > to have a small side-window (for speedbar kind of things) and a small
> > bottom window (for *Compilation* kind of things) and then allow the user
> > to split/unsplit the main remaining window without trashing those two
> > other ones.
> 
> dedicated windows?

The important thing was that they shouldn't just be dedicated,
but you shouldn't be able to accidentally switch to them remove them,
split them, ...

> The thing is that I think they should look somewhat
> different than regular windows... maybe have their own minibuffer?

Why ?
I share my minibuffer among all my frames, so obviously I don't see
the benefit of having several minibuffers, but I see it even less
if it's within the same frame.

> > Maybe we could try to make the window-hierarchy (inside a frame) more
> > constraining (i.e. have C-x o only switch within some subset and have
> > another C-x 7 o to get outside of the set of windows).  I'm not sure
> > I'm making sense...
> 
> It would need to be more flexible.  I wrote the original "PluginHolder"
> implementation for the jEdit editor.  It has the ability to hold a "plugin"
> at NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, and WEST.  You can also split these locations into
> multiple frames and store more than one plugin in each section.

I do not understand how it requires "more flexibility" than what
I described.  More specifically, it seems not really related.
But that's probably because I don't really understand what you describe,
so could you describe more closely what that pluginholder does ?

We can already split windows to have a small speedbar window on the
left side or the right side...  The problem as I see it is how to make
it easy for the user to specify this layout and (more importantly right
now) how to make sure this layout doesn't get thrashed all the time.

> Yes.  This was another thing brought up in the design of PluginManager.  It
> seems that about 50% of the people want to have these things as a dedicated
> window and the other 50% want this as an "inner window" (or whatever it is
> called).

Obviously, we want it to be customizable.
pop-up-frames, pop-up-windows, special-display-buffers and friends
are good, but we need more.


        Stefan